Robo-advisor enhances offering

Robo-advisor enhances offering

Toronto-based Justwealth Financial has made its Portfolio Review Service, an investment account transparency tool, freely available to the general public. The firm has also added three new ETFs to its online investment lineup.

“CRM2 is not complete in terms of full fee disclosure,” said Justwealth President Andrew Kirkland. “The [online portfolio review tool] will inform investors of additional fees that they may be paying, and provide an in-depth review and opinion of the investment merits of their current portfolio.”

Justwealth’s online review tool has been available to clients for some time, but in light of new reporting requirements under CRM2, the company has chosen to give all investors access to it. Through the tool, Justwealth experts can review a portfolio through many lenses, including performance, fees, diversification, account structuring, and presence of actual or possible conflicts of interest.

Based a Google Canadian consumer survey it conducted in 2016, Justwealth found that 65.1% of respondents did not know about the new CRM2 rules. Almost two thirds of the respondents did not know the total annual investment fees they paid, and more than 80% were unfamiliar with robo-advisor services. Justwealth believes that it, along with other firms that can provide transparent disclosures, will experience increased demand as Canadians become more aware of the fees they are paying.

Expanding its offering on another front, Justwealth has also introduced three new ETFs into their lineup: the BMO Ultra Short-Term Bond ETF, the BMO US Put Write ETF and the Purpose Premium Yield Fund ETF. The additions have brought the firm’s offering to a total of 32 different ETFs from seven distinct providers in its investment portfolios, of which it has 61.